I often wonder how Arkansans view the state’s efforts to bolster innovation, support entrepreneurship and advance research activities. Growing up in Mena, I know it wasn’t on my radar, and I don’t remember it being discussed at all. There were usually much more pressing needs that demanded attention.
Did you know that Arkansas ranks second in the nation for aquaculture? Arkansas Research Alliance Academy member Rebecca Lochmann, Director of the Aquaculture & Fisheries Center of Excellence at the UAPB, has focused her research on protecting this nearly $68 million-per-year industry.
Dr. Tansel Karabacak, ARA Academy Member and Present Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UA Little Rock, shares his experiences and challenges with bringing laboratory innovation to private enterprise, and how that process can be improved through communication.
Foley and his team are developing a database of Salmonella virulence genes that can be used by FDA and other public-health organizations to detect an increase in Salmonella’s disease-causing ability. This allows improved utility of the gold-standard, whole-genome sequencing, for dissecting foodborne outbreaks and understanding risk.
The rise of social media has transformed our society. We’re more connected than ever, but we’re also far more vulnerable to privacy breaches, cybercrime and misinformation. UA Little Rock professor Dr. Nitin Agarwal researches cyber information campaigns, social computing, deviant behavior modeling, group dynamics, social-cyber forensics, and privacy.
The Translational Research Institute at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) through a Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (CTSA). As the institute’s director, Dr. Laura James is tasked with nurturing viable and valuable research opportunities across the entire state of Arkansas.
The development of instruments to observe the atomic structures in atomic and molecular level changed the science and development of the materials forever. Dr. Mortazavi discusses the impact the study of nanomaterials have had on the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and they future they hold for science.
Dr. Laura Schnackenberg, NCTR’s director of the Division of Systems Biology, leads a multidisciplinary team exploring a wide range of innovative research. One area of research is focused on reducing the use of animal testing in nonclinical studies.
Innovation can seem to come out of nowhere. Like ChatGPT. In reality, the AI program was developed over years or decades with incremental advancements and a variety of victories and failures/false starts, both behind the scenes and quite public.
